


autoclave

by thetalkingcrocus



Series: Hannibal Daemon AU [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode Related, Episode Remix, Episode: s01e02 Amuse-Bouche
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-06 22:59:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19072408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetalkingcrocus/pseuds/thetalkingcrocus
Summary: "The presence of anyone more overwhelming than his own daemon was like paddling into the ocean; his feet could occasionally touch the bottom, but more often than not waves buoyed him up and away from anything concrete."(Amuse-Bouche, with daemons)





	autoclave

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a long while since I wrote the first part of this series, but I haven't given up yet! I love this world and this AU and will keep working at it. I've also enlisted the help of my friend and fellow daemon AU connoisseur with this one, and she and I will be working together from now on. 
> 
> See the endnote of part one for an initial daemonverse primer, and the end notes of this part for some more daemonverse concepts that come up in this section. 
> 
> We hope you enjoy this labor of love!

 

> When I try to open up to you, I get completely lost  
>  Houses swallowed by the earth, windows thick with frost  
>  And I reach deep down within but the pathways twist and turn  
>  And there's no light anywhere and nothing left to burn  
>    
>  I am this great, unstable mass of blood and foam  
>  And no emotion that's worth having could call my heart its home  
>  My heart's an autoclave  
>  My heart's an autoclave

The Mountain Goats, "Autoclave" 

 

* * *

 

 

Will was gathering his notes, which have migrated explosively across his lecture stand, when he saw Alana make her way in. Her pretty little woodpecker daemon flitted above her head- enough of the students have left that she had room to navigate below him and maintain their range comfortably. Will smiled despite himself as she greeted him.

 

“How are you, Will?” she asked as her daemon dropped neatly to the side of Delilah’s tank, where he dips his beak into the water so Delilah can touch her rounded nose to his.

Will stooped to pick up one of the students’ assignments that somehow made its way to the floor during the mass egress, and tilted his head.

 

“I’ve been better.”

“That will likely continue to be true,” Alana replied, and her eyes flared apology. Her daemon flew up to her shoulder, drawing Will’s eye to the doorway as Jack Crawford and Cassandra muscled their way through the stragglers. Once the last keener had left, Cassandra took a couple meandering steps towards the door, effectively trapping Will inside. He scowled and a quiet splash indicated Delilah’s frustrated tight circle turn inside the lectern tank.

 

“Hello, Will.” Jack said, glancing back with an approving nod at his daemon where she stood blocking the door. “We got the news that the board approved you for return to active duty.”   
  
“Depending,” Alana said, extending a pale hand; her daemon finished his doting inspection of Delilah and landed there with grace, “on whether you want to return to the field.”   
  
“I’ve ordered a psych eval, Will.” Jack cut to the chase, glancing at Delilah within her little tank.   
  
Will glanced up at Alana, tired eyes flicking between her and Jack.   
  
“When do we start, Alana?”

 

“Not with Tapio and I,” Alana replied, stroking her fingers over her daemon’s feathers, “with Hannibal Lecter.”

 

* * *

 

 

One of the more uncomfortable things about Will’s empathy was how he could _feel_ it taking hold of him. Even when he wasn’t profiling a killer, or standing in a crime scene, he could feel himself gently eroding, reshaping into the powerful personalities that surrounded him every day. The presence of anyone more overwhelming than his own daemon was like paddling into the ocean; his feet could occasionally touch the bottom, but more often than not waves buoyed him up and away from anything concrete.

 

He was vaguely, distantly annoyed when Delilah pointed out that he was picking up on Hannibal’s sense of theatrics. She was in her usual plastic tub, he was slowly pacing the shelves lining the office mezzanine. Hannibal had invited them in, his great ghoul of a bird daemon politely immobile by the desk, and her eyes tracked Will as he found himself on a direct vector towards and up the ladder to the second level.

“Congratulations, Will.” Will looked down to see Hannibal standing, hands in pockets, smiling up at him. A sudden gust of wind buffeted his back and heard a crackling sound like a large  limb snapping off a tree. “You are totally functional, and more or less sane. Well done.”

 

Will turned, and found himself face to face with the huge stork daemon. She was almost tall enough to look Will in the eye. Her wide hooked bill held a sheet of crisp paper, and with a flick of her head she nudged it into Will’s free hand. He mutely accepted it and she stepped back, blinking slowly.

 

Will turn again, redirecting his gaze to Hannibal from the daemon. Talking directly to a daemon was like direct eye contact, only worse. Then his mind snapped back to the issue at hand. “Did you just rubber-stamp me?”

 

Hannibal looked amused, the corner of his mouth upturned to an almost imperceptible degree. “Yes. Jack Crawford can lay his weary head to rest, knowing he did not break you. And now our conversation can continue unobstructed, without paperwork.”

 

Will found himself walking forwards again, his natural frantic physical energy slowing as Hannibal’s personality gently gnawed away at his own. This new gait was sedate, relaxed. Behind his back Will could hear the almost-imperceptible tap of talons on wood.

 

He came to a halt again, unconsciously folded the sheet of paper into quarters, slipped it between his thumb and the tupperware lid of Delilah’s makeshift travel case. The newt daemon flipped over in irritation, rolling her head back to expose her warning orange throat. “Jack thinks we need therapy.”

 

“What you need is a way out of dark places, when Jack sends you there.” The ceiling lights shone down onto Hannibal’s face, erasing the shadows that usually pooled under his eyes and cheekbones.

 

Will shook his head briefly, resumed his pendulum pace. “The last time Jack sent me to a dark place,” he murmured, “I brought something back.”

 

“A surrogate daughter?”

 

Will turned around. The shoebill was a polite meter plus distance away, but she held his gaze. Her voice was also soft, accented, lulling, but an octave higher. He could not have mistaken her voice for Hannibal’s.

 

Delilah lashed her tail. It hit the side of the tupperware bin with a soft thud.

 

Laima cocked her head at Will. Below the both of them Hannibal had returned to his desk, once more sorting through papers.  The stork daemon continued, “You saved Abigail Hobbes’ life. You also orphaned her. That comes with certain emotional obligations, regardless of empathy disorders.”

 

Will was momentarily taken aback, unsure of who to address. Prior behavior patterns won out and he turned to speak down at Hannibal. “You were there too. Do you feel obligated?”

 

“Yes.” Hannibal turned and looked up at Will. Two pairs of eyes now rested on him and his daemon, still thrashing in the tupperware. Will felt Delilah weakly pointing out how unusual this was, how a daemon is not a strong enough presence to have an impactful personality, but her voice was getting weaker and weaker in his mind as she was drowned out by the twin amplifiers of Hannibal Lecter’s overwhelming presence. Someone spoke, but Will could not identify the voice as man or daemon.

 

* * *

 

 

_As Will clamps his hands around Abigail’s throat, desperately trying to hold back the gouts of blood that pump out with each terror-frenzied heartbeat, he looks up at Garret Jacob Hobbs. The man’s crumpled body is folded into the corner, one hand wrapped around the innumerable bullet wounds on his chest, the other reaching to his side and grasping the back of his daemon. His fingers smear the white feathers with crimson but Will feels that there is no affection or love in this gesture - the man is holding her like he’s holding his body, a mindless impulse to hold his physicality together in his final moments. And indeed the swan is leaking Dust, gritty golden flakes drifting off the feathers and sticking to blood clotted fingers._

 

_Will feels Delilah flip in his pocket, feels her recognition and fear and anger like distant ripples from a tidal wave miles and miles away. This is them, no affection, no profound sympathetic bond, just two pieces split from a whole._

 

 _The swan raises her head, black neck and face flicked with blood and Dust. Her black bottomless eyes bore into Will’s behind crooked smudged lenses, and if it was possible for a bird to smile she was smiling. “See?” she hisses._ “See?”

 

* * *

 

Will knelt, reached into a damp breast pocket, and drew out Delilah. He set her down into the dirt of the nearest grave - in the distance the local officer frowns and Freddie Lounds’ tamarin daemon can’t suppress a little gasp of sensationalized excitement - and the newt daemon settles herself, breathing deep and feeling the terroir of the soil. Through her skin and nose and tongue he confirms what Beverly told them moments before: nutrient rich compost, high levels of nitrogen, the ground itself thrumming with bacteria working to break apart tiny pieces of humanity and reassemble them back into their elemental components.

 

Will closed his eyes and felt Delilah get further and further away, a buoy on the surface of a turbulent sea, bobbing beyond his reach. And then in the opposite direction, approaching instead of retreating, he felt the shape of something else, someone else, a different daemon and person -

 

_He is jabbing a shovel into the dirt, scooping rough piles of soil back over the naked body in the grave before him. The man’s terrapin daemon is tucked into one hand, while the other protrudes with the aid of a piece of rebar, a life-saving IV hooked into a vein. The man breathes shallowly through the tube Will had just shoved up his nose._

 

_“I choose this man. I did not bind his arms or his legs as I bury him in a shallow grave. He is alive but will never be conscious again.” Behind him, Will can feel the still undefined daemon stirring, pushing through the low ground cover shrubs and leafy detritus of the forest floor._

 

_“He won’t know he’s dying. I don’t need him to.” The vague and distant daemon leans against his pant leg, pleased with their work. “This is my design.”_

 

_As Will throws another shovel of dirt onto the body in the grave it’s occupant is no longer the anonymous turtle daemoned man. Garrett Jacob Hobbs is looking up at him with glassy eyes, bullet wounds now scabbed with soil, his arms woven through the wing feathers of the giant swan daemon. The swan twists her neck around, looks up at him, opens her bill to hiss -_

 

Will gasped for air and was brought back to the present, his mind blessedly clear and _his_ again. The lingering anonymous daemon presence had melted away and a tremor worked its way through his body, starting with his tight shoulders and working its way through his limbs. His hands shook and he forced them into fists, pressed them into his thighs. All at once the dirt clinging to Delilah was overwhelming his senses, cloying, sweet with decomposition. He reached for her, wrapped his fingers around her little body, and recoiled with a panicked yell as moldering fingers clamp on his wrist, the human touch of the victim a hair’s breadth from Delilah.

 

“We need a medic!” Will called as he pried the grip from his arm. Once the way was clear, Delilah scampered up Will’s sleeve until she was further from the man in the grave. Breathing hard, Will tucked her back into his handkerchief-lined pocket. As he glanced back into the grave,  the blearily blinking terrapin was abruptly replaced by wide white wings, body smeared vibrant red and gold.

 

“See?” Hobbs’ daemon leered at him.

 

Will scrambled backward and busied himself with locating Jack and moving towards him. As he did, Cassandra swung her head to face him, heavy-lashed eyes reflecting the forest’s dappled sunlight.

 

“What do you have for us?”

 

* * *

 

“Is it harder imagining the thrill someone feels while killing now you’ve done it yourself?” Hannibal asked, voice as placid as it had been when he referred to the way the swan haunted Will as a normal stress reaction. Today Laima had been standing next to Hannibal when they arrived, still and tranquil as though she were a flesh-and-blood stork waiting for something to move beneath the water.

 

“Yes.” Will replied abruptly, eyes flickering down to where Delilah circled restlessly in her plastic confines.

 

“If you’d like more space,” Laima says, unprompted, with a tilt of her great head, “you are welcome to use the water feature.”   
  
Will starts to shake his head at the same time Delilah puts her forelegs on the edge of the container, bumping the lid out of alignment and presenting a clear signal of intent. Sighing, Will picks up his daemon and deposits her into the bubbling pool beneath the gnarled tree. Laima strides purposefully across the room to adjust the setting on the filter before the little newt gets buffeted away in the current.

 

 _Maybe it’ll be easier to concentrate with you over there_ , Will grumbled at his daemon through their connection. He sensed her irritation and also her relief, and it isn’t until that surge of relief that he contemplated how long it’s been since he switched out the water in her little travel case. It felt stale, he realizes, and suppresses a shudder, distancing his mind from hers.

 

Hannibal’s expression is unchanging as Laima retreats to the wall in the guise of adjusting the filter. She angles her head and with the reduced noise from the water feature, she can hear shifting in the waiting room, forty minutes before his next patient is due to arrive. They filed away the information in the space where their minds meet as Laima returned to Hannibal’s side.

 

“You told me this killer is making a garden. Why do you think he’s so interested in adding Dust to the soil?”

 

Will shook his head as if to clear it and glanced back at the water feature where Delilah swam, “No, it can’t just be about the soil. He doesn’t get the Dust until the people die, if that’s all he wanted he could leave the human bodies somewhere else. He doesn’t want to - to dismiss their connection.”   
  
“The most profound connection possible, that between human and daemon. Capable of the lowest lows and the highest highs.”

 

Will felt suddenly overpowered by the killer’s grief, winced, and said nothing.

 

“Is that what your Farmer is looking for, Will? Connection?”

 

* * *

 

Laima leaves the water feature down even after Will has scooped Delilah back into her travel container, and she and Hannibal stand statue like and slip their perceptions together. They share the carpet beneath their feet: his comfortable in loafers, hers stiff from standing on flat ground through the duration of Will’s appointment. Their sensations blur together, until Hannibal too perceives the click of a device being pulled away from the wall. He and Laima look at each other as they slip out of four-eye trance and move as one creature towards the door, schooling themselves into their roles.

 

“Miss Kimball,” Hannibal paused, smiled, tilted his head, “Please, come in.”

 

The woman and her little tamarin enter; once she takes a seat he goes to investigate the perching tree, peering down at the clear water before returning to perch on the back of his human’s seat.

 

“Thank you for agreeing to this, Dr. Lecter. I’ve never seen a psychiatrist before and I am-” she jerked her head at the precise little hands of her daemon where he groomed her long red hair “Unfortunately thorough. You’re one of three doctors I will be interviewing. That garden feature pulls you ahead though. Micah likes the orchids.”

 

Laima dipped her bill in acknowledgement as the tamarin chattered in her direction.

 

“Thorough is good.” Hannibal said, full of false warmth, “May I ask what made you seek a psychiatrist at this juncture?”

 

“Can I ask a few questions of my own first? I love your work on form discrimination and social exclusion, and I was wonder-”

 

“Are you Freddie Lounds of Midas?”

 

The expressions of the woman and her monkey darkened. Laima stretched, opening her wings and clacking her bill.

 

Freddie made to stand, while Midas scampered off of her chair to walk alongside her, “I am so embarrassed.”

 

Laima moved gracefully to stand between the woman and the door as her human replied, “You should be. This is a rather outstanding breach of ethics, even for a tabloid journalist.”   
  
“We write criminal justice” Midas the tamarin protested, eyes darting to find a way around the bird blocking his way. Hannibal had risen to stand on Freddie and Midas’ other side.

 

“I’m afraid I must ask for your bag.”   
  
“What?” Freddie narrowed her eyes defensively, clutching the purse to her chest.

 

“Your bag, please. I’d rather not take it from you.”

 

Freddie reluctantly passed the bag to Hannibal and followed tentatively after him as he moved towards the couch, Laima stepping after her like a prison guard.

 

“I was recording our conversation.”   
  
“Our conversation?” Hannibal asked mildly, “Yours and mine? Not mine and Will Graham’s?”   


Freddie’s expression was nervous, eyes darting to find an exit, “I may have also recorded yours and Will Graham’s.”

 

“Come.” Hannibal said, an order wrapped in politeness, “sit by me.”

 

Freddie took a seat next to Hannibal on the couch and as Midas jumped onto the cushion next to hers, Laima took a quick step forward and clasped her bill, gently for now, onto the tamarin’s arm.

 

“Delete the conversations, Miss Lounds. Doctor-patient confidentiality goes both ways.”

 

He watches her delete the items from the recorder, calm as Midas grows more and more agitated in Laima’s grip. Freddie herself is uncomfortable, keeps glancing at the little monkey daemon, so much smaller than the dull bird holding him.

 

“You’ve been terribly rude.” Hannibal says, looking between Midas and Freddie. Laima’s bill increases the pressure on Midas’ arm, just a little, and Freddie winces as the stork releases the monkey entirely and he comes scampering back to her. She uses her right hand to softly palpate her daemon’s arm, but her eyes are locked on Hannibal; he’s not done talking. “What’s to be done about that?”

 

* * *

 

“You were right.” Jimmy’s snake periscopes off of his forearm, flicking his tongue and dipping his sleek head towards Delilah. “They’re buried in compost.”  

 

“The worst version of Old MacDonald ever,” Jimmy frowns.   
  
“Not only that,” Zeller adds, adjusting the screen above the body with the team’s notes on it, “they’re soaked in glucose. Died from kidney failure.” Zeller pulls the sheet over the man, still dusted with the golden remains of his turtle daemon.

 

“He was feeding them sugar.” Beverly noted, her mynah hopping from her shoulder to a countertop as she moved to set down the IV bags she carried, “using their circulatory systems at first, and then dialysis after their bodies started to break down.”  
  
Delilah floated thoughts to Will from her place in his pocket, pressed close against his chest by the angle of his arms. Sugar, kidneys…

 

“Did they die from diabetic ketoacidosis?”   


The three techs glanced at each other and their daemons murmured curiously. Zeller sighed and glanced at his lemur.

 

“We don’t know they’re diabetics.”

 

“We do, actually. They’re diabetics, he.” Will paused, swallowed, pushed off the tight feeling in his skin; Delilah drying out. “He induces a coma and puts them in the ground. He’s switching their medications.”

 

* * *

 

Even before the woman asked for her insulin prescription, Corra knew she was theirs. Not only was she pretty, but her little snake daemon revealed her alertness, her awareness of her surroundings. Unlike so many of the patients that shuffled through the pharmacy in a faceless parade, she was paying attention to her surroundings. Bright, in-tune, integrated into their world.

 

The black snake was flickering it’s tongue, tasting the air. So perceptive. How helpful that sense would be, to add to the collective. How connected the two of them were.

 

As Eldon reached for the second bottle the insect daemon case hung around his neck shifted, opaque plastic clicking against the small glass bottle. Corra was excited as he was to continue their work. This woman and her snake were a good choice, a correct choice to start their next project. Eldon cupped a hand around the lanyard where Corra hung, confined, and flashed the woman a rare and genuine smile. From Corra’s imagination he had the distinct thought of antennae on skin.

 

* * *

 

The tactical team pouring in through the parking garage of the pharmacy move whisper-quiet over the concrete. Will thinks briefly how encumbered they look next to himself and Jack, in normal work clothes. The only daemon of comparable size to Cassandra, an officer’s scruffy Wolfhound, is outfitted with its own body armour. Most of the others have daemons small enough to be tucked away inside their kevlar and shields. Will carries Delilah in plastic, less than bulletproof, but neither he nor the newt seemed concerned.

 

The customers of the store were another story entirely. As they strode towards the pharmacy, Will catalogued the expressions of shock and fear on human and daemon faces.

 

“Everyone please stop what you are doing, put your hands in the air.” Jack bellows, Cassandra walking confidently at his side. She shifts to fall a step behind him as they approach the counter. “Special Agent Jack Crawford of Cassandra, which one of you is Eldon Stammets?”   
  
The young pharmacist looks from side to side, pressing his little leopard gecko against his chest. “Eldon was just here! Just now!”

 

“Is his car still in the parking lot?”

 

The squadron re-enter the echoing space, and Will grabs a baton from one of the outfitted officers. He sets Delilah’s container down while he breaks the window and glances inside at the empty seats. The container remained on the ground when he flips the lever to trigger the trunk to open, and the familiar scent of warm soil comes flowing out. He can see the plastic regalia of a respirator, and he paused with his hands an inch above the soil, steeling himself before plunging his hands into the dirt and shovelling it away from the person inside the car. Her blonde hair becomes visible just as his right hand meets something porcelain smooth and he jerks back it as the woman’s daemon.

 

A splash comes from Delilah’s tank, her shudder palpable as Will takes what he hopes is a steadying breath before gently brushing the dirt away from the woman’s face, above the spot where her rat snake coils around her neck. Only when he can see the intact scales and the woman’s placid face does he turn to the group behind him.   
  
“They’re alive! Woman and a snake daemon. We’re going to need EMTs, and they’re going to need to be careful.”

 

The other officers start moving in an orderly, precise kind of way, and Will

 

“We know his name, we have his address, we have his car-”

 

After Will washes his hands, over and over, in the men’s washroom of the store, he emerges to the sombre faces of his colleagues. Beverly’s Mynah bird dips his head at Delilah.

 

Jack exhales through his teeth. “Eldon’s workstation… he was reading TattleCrime.”

 

Beverly holds the printout from the pharmacy printer “The FBI isn’t just hunting psychopaths, they’re head-hunting them, too, offering competitive pay and benefits in the hopes of using one cold-blooded mind to catch an--”

 

Jack cuts her off, as an act of mercy, “It’s about you, Will.”

 

* * *

 

The FBI woman slammed Freddie into the mattress, shoving her face down into the scratchy wool blanket as her arms were restrained with plastic ties. Midas had pinged off her shoulder the moment the door burst open, dashing out of the way, but a pair of quick black paws grabbed him around the waist and squeezed so tightly that Freddie gasped for air. Zeller’s lemur daemon, who had been so gentle not a week earlier, dug her nails into the tamarin’s silky fur so that no matter how hard he twisted he could not escape her grip.

 

Despite the obvious intimacy seen between the two daemons Zeller himself acted casual, slowly following the task force members into the room before calling the scene clear. As Freddie was flipped around and forcibly sat on the bed his gaze quickly shifted and he locked on to the floor, the crappy carpeting, the stain near a metal leg of the cheap bedframe - anything to avoid eye contact.  However Gwyn clung tightly to Midas, who was squirming in the direction of her human.

 

Jack and his massive horse-like daemon - so big that Zeller and the rest of the flunkies backed up, pressing their backs against the ratty faded wallpaper - loomed over Freddie’s head. The daemon’s ears were pinned back, her horns angled to be a hair’s breadth from Freddie’s face, but it was all for show and Freddie knew as much. As she called Jack on his bluff the daemon huffed through flared nostrils, blowing hot air on her face.

 

Sensing an impasse Jack paused, clicked his tongue thoughtfully, then continued, “... you got all your information from a local detective?” Behind him Zeller’s head snapped up, beads of sweat sparkling on his forehead. The lemur daemon squeezed harder, holding the little tamarin by the biceps, then sunk her teeth into the monkey’s throat. Freddie felt his rapid heartbeat fluttering desperately behind her clavicles. The lemur was not a daemon used to fighting, and they both could feel the desperation tensing her muscles like piano wire.

 

Fortunately for Zeller, everyone else in the room was fixated on Freddie and Jack, not the silent drama playing out between the two daemons in the corner. Two pathways lay in front of Freddie and Midas, two easy options - and in the few scarce seconds she had before she knew Jack would lay into them again, Freddie made her decision and spoke. Nothing she said was truly incorrect, but she did not name any explicit names or daemons or physicalities, and the narrative elegantly fit into Jack’s worldview.

 

She saw him accept her story, as the muscles untensed in the neck of his daemon. This was not unnoticed by Zeller, and his daemon in turn relaxed her grip on Midas. Although not enough for him to wriggle out and return to her side as Jack began to wind up once more and yanked out a strand of her hair.

 

“I can indict you for obstructing justice!” Jack thundered.

 

“...I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.” Freddie’s smile was small, but confident. She felt the pendulum in the room swing back in her direction, felt the scales tip towards even. Jack crawford was a powerful man, but she was not powerless herself.

 

“You don’t write another word about Will Graham, and I won’t have to.” Jack stood back up to his full height, hands in his pockets, and his daemon swung her bulk around towards the door. She led the walk out, Jack following behind, but shot a clear look over one equine shoulder before she left: we’re watching you. Sleep with one eye open.

 

The rest of the team flowed out of the room. Zeller, glancing at the retreating team, snapped open a knife to cut Freddie’s restraints. As he sawed at the plastic ties the lemur flung Midas to the ground, where he bounced and ricocheted back to his human’s side.

 

The severed ties popped open, releasing Freddie’s wrists, and the lemur daemon leapt from the floor to the bed to Zeller’s arms. As he folded the knife and stuffed it back into a pocket she leaned down, yellow eyes boring directly into Freddie’s.

 

“You used us.”

 

Midas, unusually quiet, would not meet the other daemon’s gaze as they slammed the motel room door shut, and when Freddie ran a finger down the length of his spine he would not meet hers either.

 

* * *

 

It was the footsteps that he remembered most about the dream. The clicking of talons on hospital linoleum. In the dream, Hannibal was nowhere to be seen, but that didn’t seem to inconvenience Laima, who walked steadily down the corridor. She turned her head to look at him, made eye contact right before rounding the corner, and every instinct in Will’s body said to follow her.

 

When he woke, it was to Alana’s soft voice. She sat on Abigail’s hospital bed, and Tapio was perched on the little table where Delilah’s travel container rested. Both daemons had their gazes fixed on the women on the bed. Abigail’s own daemon, small and birdlike, rested tucked against the less damaged side of her throat where the nurses wouldn’t risk touching him when they changed her dressings.

 

It was Tapio who noticed Will stirring before his sleepy “What are you reading?”   
  
“Flannery O’Connor. When I was on the cusp of settling, I read all her work over and over. Tapio used to flicker between the forms of the main characters. We had no idea what we’d settle as, but we wanted so badly for it to be something from one of those stories.”   
  
“Was it?” Will asked, glancing at the woodpecker.

 

Alana and Tapio laughed together, and he took to the air to perch on her shoulder, “No. Nothing so glamorous. Better, somehow, though.”   
  
“I always knew Delilah was going to be something… less than noble.” Will said, smirking at the newt where she paddled slowly around her tank.

 

Alana’s brow creased and she opened her mouth to interrupt his disparaging, but he cut her off before she could.

 

“What do you think-” he said, aware of the childish implications of such a clumsy question but unable to stop himself as he looked at Abigail, fragile as a doll in her hospital bed, “What do you think they’ll settle as?”   
  
Alana didn’t answer, just turned her gaze to Abigail and Elijah and let the weight of possibility hang in the air.

 

“You ever think you could be reading to a killer?”

 

“According to Freddie Lounds’ recent article, I guess I could be reading to two killers.”

 

“Oh, yeah, that.” Will shifted to sit upright and pulled Delilah’s tank closer to him. “Did Jack send you?”

 

“I sent me. Or maybe Abigail did.” Alana glanced again at the figures on the bed. “Abigail Hobbs is a success for you.”   
  
Delilah put one small foot against the clear plexiglass of her tank as Will replied, “Doesn’t look like much of a success.”

 

“Don’t feel sorry for yourself that you saved their life.”   
  
“I don’t. I - we- don’t feel sorry for ourselves at all. I feel… good.”

 

 _Righteous,_ Delilah echoed, but the only sound from her tank was the rippling of the water.

 

* * *

 

 

Freddie and Midas step into the grey light of day and don’t get further than a step before they notice the local officer leaning against his car, his bright blue tang daemon at his side in a rolling travel tank, full of irritated movement. He rests his hand on the handle of the tank as he addresses her.

 

“I don’t know where you got half that information, but it wasn’t from me. They think I told you all of it.”   
  
“Making inferences is part of my job. I’m sorry if it made you lose yours.” Freddie said, covering her annoyance with a sip of her milky coffee.

 

“They didn’t fire me.” The detective retorted, tone defensive.   
  
“Oh, they will. Jack Crawford will make sure of that. I can help you get another job, something off the force.”   
  
“Oh, so I’m not the first cop you’ve gotten fired.”   
  
“I guarantee you it pays better. Future you is thanking me right now - aquatic daemon remodelling isn’t cheap.”   
  
As the man opens his mouth to reply a shot rings out, spraying Freddie’s face with blood before she realizes what is happening. Midas lets out a primal shriek of terror. The man’s daemon tank is just Dust and water now, a macabre snowglobe.

 

The man approaching them has a gun and an insect lanyard around his neck.

 

“I read your article.” He said, calmer than Freddie by far. “I want you to tell me about Will Graham.”

 

Freddie calls out to Jack, after, shaken and wide eyed. When he and Cassandra come walking across the parking lot her hands are still tight on Midas with a kind of urgency.   
  
“Where’s Will Graham?”   
  
“Miss Lounds, you’re our eye witness. We don’t need Will and Delilah to reconstruct-”   
  
“That’s not why I’m asking.” Jack’s eyes scanned Freddie’s face as Cassandra nudged a uniformed officer’s caiman daemon, assigning her to start the search for Will. “Stammets was talking about the human-daemon connection, and how fungus provides a map for that connection to spread beyond the individual. Dust building on Dust, thoughts leaping from brain to brain, daemon connecting with human.”   
  
“What does he want with Will Graham?”   
  
“Someone who understands him. Will was right, Jack. Stammets is looking for connection.” Midas began to compulsively groom Freddie’s hair, as though to soothe them both.

 

“Freddie. What did you tell Stammets about Will?”   
  
“I told him about Abigail.”   
  
“What about her?”   
  
“Everything. He wants to help Abigail and Will bond, and he’s never… done this to someone unsettled before. He was excited about it, Jack. He’s going to bury her.”   


* * *

 

Will’s strides were long and his aura of anxiety was palpable as he rounded the corner into Abigail’s room. Delilah peered out from his damp breast pocket, adding her eyesight and her mounting concern for Abigail to Will’s. They didn’t need the keen perception of newt eyes to confirm the reality of her empty bed. Will spun quickly, grabbing his ID from his pocket as he approached the nurse’s station.

 

“Abigail Hobbs, of Elijah. The girl in 408. Where is she?”   
  
The nurse looked up from her work, her pika daemon’s nose twitching in irritation.   


“They took her for tests!”

 

“Who took her?” Delilah asked, staring straight at the human woman who flinched back from the fixed gaze of the newt, “Who took her?”

 

The nurse pointed vaguely and Will sprinted down the corridor, drawing his gun in a dusty concrete stairwell without breaking his stride. Will shouldered the door open and caught sight of Stammets rounding the corner, Abigail and Elijah still and curled together on the hospital bed, still peacefully unconscious.

 

Will accelerated, calling out as he raised his weapon. At the echo of his voice, Stammets turned in time to meet the bullet of Will’s gun, which caught him in the shoulder. Stammets went down as Will caught up to Eldon, placing himself squarely between the man and Abigail.

 

“What were you going to do to her?” Will snarled, feeling the fabric across his chest twist as Delilah climbed to his shoulder, peering down at Abigail and Elijah.

 

Stammet’s hand clutched the insect lanyard he wore. “Mycelium mirror the way Dust connects to itself, the way daemons connect to humans. I was going to give that back to her.”   
  
“By burying her alive?” Will still held his gun pointed at the man.

 

“That journalist, she said you understood me. Understood us”   
  
“I don’t.” Will replied before the statement sunk in. Delilah hissed at him and he took a step back towards Abigail’s gurney without thinking, away from the leafcutter ant, outside of her container, crawling across the hospital floor. He stepped back three more times until he was securely out of the man’s range, skin prickling.

 

“You would have.” Eldon said wistfully, eyes now on his daemon as she made her way back to him. “Walk into a field of mycelium, they know you are there! They know you are there!” He extended his good hand and visibly relaxed despite his pain when his daemon touched her tiny legs to his skin. “The spores reach for you when you pass by. They want your touch. I know who you're reaching for, I know. Abigail Hobbs, Elijah. You should have let me plant her. You would have found her in a field where she --where both of them-- could finally reach back.”

 

* * *

 

Will’s restless pacing had taken him across Hannibal’s plush office, and it was when his back was to Hannibal that the other man spoke. “When you shot Eldon Stammets, who was it that you saw?” 

  
A flash of the crimson tinged swan echoed through Will’s mind and he shook his head as though to clear it.

 

“I didn’t see Hobbs.”   
  
“Then it’s not Hobbs that’s haunting you. It’s the thought of there being a man so bad that killing him felt good.”   
  
“Killing Hobbs felt…” Will began, but was interrupted by his own daemon.

Delilah looked right at Hannibal when she said “Just. Righteous.” Will scooped her out of the water feature and held her in damp hands, turning to lean against the wall next to it as Hannibal watched them.

 

“I didn’t feel just when I shot Eldon Stammets.” he continued.

 

Hannibal nodded thoughtfully, placing a hand on Laima where she stood next to him. “You didn’t kill Eldon Stammets.”   


“I thought about killing him. I’m not still not entirely sure that wasn’t my intention when I pulled the trigger.”

 

“That skin of yours again, Will.” Hannibal said, and Laima inclined her head towards Delilah. “If you did intend to kill Stammets, it’s because you understand why he did the things he did. It’s beautiful in its own way. An indicator species, giving voice to the unmentionable.”   
  
“Only killing, instead of dying.” Will breathed. “I should have stuck to fixing boat motors in Louisiana.”

 

Hannibal took a step forward, and Laima took a step beyond him, then settled, preening one massive wing. “A boat engine is a machine. A predictable problem, easy to solve. You fail, there's a paddle. Where was your paddle with Hobbs?”

 

Will glanced down at and then away from his daemon. “You’re supposed to be my paddle, Dr. Lecter.”

 

Laima and Hannibal raised their gazes in tandem. “I am.” Hannibal said. “It wasn't the act of killing Hobbs that got you down, was it? Did you really feel so bad because killing him felt so good?”

 

“Delilah liked killing Hobbs.” Will admitted, and only paused for a moment. “We both did.”

 

“Killing must feel good to God, too. He does it all the time, and are we not created in his image?”

 

“Depends who you ask.”

 

“God's terrific. He dropped a church roof on thirty-four of his worshippers last Wednesday night in Texas, while they sang a hymn.”

 

Will raised his eyebrows and busied himself with lowering Delilah back to the water feature as he replied. “Did God feel good about that?” he asked, as he rose to his feet, patting his damp hands on his slacks.

 

Hannibal smiled, softly then. Tilted his head in that birdlike gesture so like his daemon’s. Before he could speak though, his other half looked at Will with her bright, cunning eyes.

 

“He felt powerful.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> New daemonverse concepts introduced in this chapter: 
> 
> A daemon typically can only go so far away from their human without causing discomfort and eventually pain. This limit is called a "range." There are two exceptions to this - first, separation, which often occurs because of trauma, means that ranges are no longer a restriction but does not impact the human-daemon relationship or the daemon's level of sentience. Secondly, there is intercision, which in the HDM universe is a lobotomy-like procedure that renders daemons silent and dull. We will likely be playing with these concepts throughout the series, but wanted to clarify the concept of ranges before we get too far. 
> 
> "Four-eye" is a term used to describe what Hannibal and Laima do when they merge their senses so they can each feel and see what the other does. This term was, to our knowledge, coined by [Poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry) in the longrunning and gorgeous series [Daemorphing](https://archiveofourown.org/series/8983). If you like our fic, you'll love Poetry's. 
> 
> Feel free to ask questions about the way our daemons work, or our processes behind form choosing, naming, and the like. We've invested a lot of brainstorming time into this universe and are happy to see folks engaging with and appreciating it. 
> 
> Kudos and comments make our day!


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